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HOOVER, Ala. — Cara Capuano is not your typical ESPN sports reporter for one significant reason — she graduate from the University of California San Diego with a cell biology and biochemistry degree and Summa Cum Laude honors. She was also a Phi Beta Kappa and even spent a year working on her doctorate at UCLA before opting to pursue a career in sportscasting.
She eventually became a reporter for Fox Sports before joining ESPN. Now she covers college football, women’s basketball and softball for ESPN.
Capuano was here for the Southeastern Conference Media Days to prepare for the upcoming season and between interviews shared her thoughts on everything from the UK football spring game to UK-Louisville to offensive coordinator Neal Brown to women’s basketball coach Matthew Mitchell.
Question: How do you think the perception of UK football has changed since the arrival of Mark Stoops?
Capuano: “I had the opportunity because of a softball assignment to attend the spring football game at Kentucky. I was in town with my dad and it was the first time he had the chance to see Commonwealth Stadium. It was so great for me to introduce the Kentucky football fans that way with all the intensity and passion to my dad. I have had a chance to go to a lot of SEC stadiums and obviously this was not a regular-season game, but it was more electric than any other Kentucky home football game that I have been to. Even the more successful Rich Brooks later years — I started covering the SEC in 2009 — and those years were feeling recaptured just in the energy around the fans that night. There is a lot of excitement and I think it is really important for Kentucky to have that excitement.”
Question: How do you view the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry, which will be on ESPN again this year?
Capuano: “I think it is a super important rivalry to the state of Kentucky. They are very contrasting program. You have Louisville with a Heisman Trophy contender in Teddy Bridgewater leading a group with a lot of starters coming back. There are high expectations for that team. Versus a Kentucky team that is trying to establish a new identity and getting back on a path to success. As far as the game on the field this year, it might not be the most exciting for fans because it is an underdog against a highly favored team. But I know the intensity of the rivalry is great. I know these two teams love to beat each other in basketball and I think that rivalry stems from that passion there. Hopefully in the next coming years we will see two highly competitive football teams where they can back up all the emotions and the family spirit of people who went to the two schools with a good product on the field.”
Question: What do you know about UK offensive coordinator Neal Brown and his offense?
Capuano: “I don’t know a lot of the Kentucky coaches yet, but I know Neal from working with him before briefly. I think as often with the new offenses and different technical ways that coaches choose to run their offenses now, if you get the right personnel to execute your vision it can look really spectacular. I think that Neal Brown’s vision can be really magnificent as soon as he gets the right guys in place to help him put that on paper and then on the field. I think it is really going to be fun for the Kentucky fans.”
Question: How should Kentucky fans approach this season?
Capuano: “I would never tell a SEC fan how to be a fan no matter what school because they are really good at what they do. I do think that the Kentucky fans have already demonstrated from their showing at the spring game that they are ready to embrace this new regime and be excited for it. I think it is really important this year for Kentucky fans to truly cheer every success. Don’t focus on the setbacks. Cheer the successes.”
Question: What do you like about coming to Kentucky for a football game?
Capuano: “I have to be honest when I say that of all the SEC towns that I travel to, I think Lexington is visually beautiful. I think it is one of the prettiest places. I love flying in to the airport and looking out on the different farms and horses. This past spring when I went to the spring football game I also went to Keeneland. I just think Lexington is a very unique place steeped in tradition and I love the feel of that.”
Question: Is it too much to expect a time when UK could win nine or 10 games annually?
Capuano: “Isn’t that why you go out and find new coaches and try to get in new personnel and new players? That’s the whole point of what these guys do. Try to take a program and establish it as a consistent, successful team. I think coach (Mark) Stoops with his family lineage and the guys he has learned under is primed to possibly return Kentucky to that consistency.”
Question: What do you like most about covering a game — the players, coaches, game itself or fans?
Capuano: “I really love it all. My year is split into thirds. I get to start with college football and then I go into college women’s basketball and softball. Each section of my year is totally different and each have so many fulfilling elements. I can’t think of a better way to spend my Saturdays in the fall than in a stadium for a SEC matchup. No matter the matchup, no matter the game, it is going to be unbelievable football played at a higher level than most of the other conferences in the country and you know the fans are going to be bringing so much energy and electricity. To be able to experience that and soak it in every Saturday is a joy.”
Question: Would you have ever envisioned five years ago the success that UK women’s basketball has had under Matthew Mitchell?
Capuano: “He is the real deal. It reminds me a lot of coach Stoops and the football program. When you learn under the best, you have the potential to become the best from a coaching perspective. Coach Mitchell learned under Pat Summit, that is a pretty great first coach to learn under. He has at every level of his career surrounded himself with people both kind of ahead of him and people who have worked under him that have put him in position to be even better for his job and that is paying off for the Kentucky womens’ program, which is by far one of my favorite to cover. Not only is the coaching staff really incredible to deal with, but the players they are bringing in are some of the best young women that I talk to all year. Great personalities, really good students. The thing that is unique about Kentucky and you can tell in the way the women’s basketball team plays when he goes to those hockey style substitutions with four or five women at a time coming in and out, it takes a very special player to develop chemistry with 12 or 13 other young women and that’s what his teams have. He can put in any four or five players and know that group will have success because he finds players that understand team and family versus individual successes and it works so well in his system.”
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